Ebooks

Everyone from Bono to the United Nations is looking for a miracle to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley found one hiding in plain sight. While researching private schools in India for the World Bank, and worried he was doing little to help the poor, Tooley wandered into the slums of Hyderabad's Old City. Shocked to find it overflowing with tiny, parentfunded schools filled with energized students, he set out to discover if schools like these could help achieve universal education. Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces readers to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves.

What role should government have in education? This question has exercised philosophers since Plato and economists since Adam Smith. It is also a question that is as relevant today, as people around the world worry about standards in public (government) schools and governments and international agencies look to fine-tune their educational policies.

This book describes and analyses the work of one economist, Professor E.G. West, whose life's work was focused precisely on this question. His classic 1965 book, Education and the State, and subsequent writings inspired a new way of looking at this question. Based on historical analysis of what happened in the UK and USA before governments got involved in education, and supplemented with philosophical exploration of the justifications for government involvement, West set out a position with only minimal state involvement.

James Tooley outlines West's ideas and their challenges, elaborating them in terms of public choice theory and recent empirical evidence of 'education without the state' in developing countries.

Educational Equality and the New Selective Schooling by Harry Brighouse was initially published by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain in 2000. In this new edition, Brighouse has updated his argument, Kenneth R Howe and James Tooley have contributed counter-arguments and Graham Haydon has provided an introduction and afterword drawing the debates together.

The issues debated in this new edition of Educational Equality include: What is Educational Equality? Why Does Educational Equality Matter? Is Educational Equality Possible?

Educational Equality raises issues which will be of interest to all involved in educational equality, including teachers, policy makers and educationalists.

James Tooley has been described as a 21st-century Indiana Jones, travelling to remote parts of the developing world to track something that many regarded as mythical: private schools serving the poor. It was in the Indian city of Hyderabad that Tooley first discovered these schools, and wrote about them in his award-winning book The Beautiful Tree, which also documented state corruption and the attempts to shut the schools down. But the state was to exact revenge: upon returning to Hyderabad, Tooley was unjustly arrested and thrown into prison.

Conditions in the prison were dire, and the jailers typically cruel and violent, but the other prisoners were extraordinarily kind. Chillingly, many had been in prison for years, never charged with anything, often victims of police corruption, too poor to go to court and secure bail.

Imprisoned in India tells the story of Tooley's incarceration and subsequent battles with maddeningly corrupt Indian bureaucracy, which made him realise how fundamental the rule of law is to the workings of a good society. It's something we take for granted, but without which all human flourishing is threatened, especially for the poor. Tooley discovered, too, how the human spirit, even amongst those wrongfully imprisoned, can soar above the brutality and tyranny of those in power.

What is wrong with education? Why do educational reforms always miss their target? How can we create a better education system? And what can we learn from other countries?

Reclaiming Education tackles the challenges facing education that really matter - hte ones that academics often ignore, parents demand solution to and politicians need to confront. Drawing on his global research, James Tooley shows that there is an alternative to poor quality and wasteful inefficiency in education, and that education can be radically transformed to guarantee freedom and higher standards.

"Tooley radically challenges any complacency we may have about education in the 21st century." Sir Bob Salisbury

"Tooley is an extremist: some of his ideas are outrageous!" Professor Geoffrey Walford, University of Oxford

"This is truly a radical book. It should be read by everyone who thinks deeply about education." Sir Christopher Ball

Can education be run as a profitable business and still be driven by a humanitarian vision? SABIS shows the answer is yes. Now with 60 schools in 15 countries and over 60,000 students, SABIS is a global education company committed to improving lives. The book is a journey through time - tracing the company from its humble origins in 1886 Mount Lebanon, through the civil war to the present day. It's also a journey through geographies, from Kurdistan to Katrina - from the first international schools in war-torn northern Iraq, to the first charter school to reopen after the hurricane devastated inner city New Orleans.

SABIS goes where other educational providers are unwilling to tread, helping to rebuild lives shattered by war and natural disaster. It's finally a journey through the minds of committed educators, watching as they grapple with the fundamental question of how we educate young people in the virtues that have stood the test of time, whilst still enabling them to be prepared for a future of unknown possibilities.

Girls and boys are different. So why do our schools insist on treating them as identical? Could this misguided equality have anything to do with the increasing dissatisfaction among women that is revealed in survey after survey? Do gender-blind educational policies in fact work to women's disadvantage? Bringing together many women's voices, from Bridget Jones to Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan to Germaine Greer, James Tooley challenges education's sacred cows, demanding a radical rethinking of sexual politics and a fairer way forward for women. The Miseducation of Women landed like a bombshell when it was published in England a few months ago; but Mr. Tooley's book, replete with examples and anecdotes from the United States as well as Great Britain, has equal application to the gender arguments on this side of the Atlantic.

What role should government have in education? This question has exercised philosophers since Plato and economists since Adam Smith. It is also a question that is as relevant today, as people around the world worry about standards in public (government) schools and governments and international agencies look to fine-tune their educational policies.

This book describes and analyses the work of one economist, Professor E.G. West, whose life's work was focused precisely on this question. His classic 1965 book, Education and the State, and subsequent writings inspired a new way of looking at this question. Based on historical analysis of what happened in the UK and USA before governments got involved in education, and supplemented with philosophical exploration of the justifications for government involvement, West set out a position with only minimal state involvement.

James Tooley outlines West's ideas and their challenges, elaborating them in terms of public choice theory and recent empirical evidence of 'education without the state' in developing countries.

Parents in many other countries have more freedom of choice in education than Americans do. In Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands, they can choose private schools without financial penalty. As we expand school choice in the United States, reformers and policymakers should look beyond our borders and learn from the examples of other countries. Critics in America claim that school choice would benefit a minority of students at the expense of the majority or that choice in education would drain funding from public schools and segregate students into racial or economic groups. Are these claims based on fact or fear?

In this collection, scholars from Europe, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States examine other countries’ experiences with school choice and draw out critical lessons for America. What school choice policies are most effective? How well do private schools serve the poor? What policies are necessary to promote the widest selection of educational opportunities for the largest number of children? Also, what controls and regulations are most harmful to the development of a competitive education industry? Has school choice in other countries led to a free education market, or has it, at least in some cases, led instead to increased regulations, regimentation, and uniformity among private and public schools? The wealth of information and insights contained in this volume will aid policymakers and reformers as they search for the best ways to improve American education.